movies

Potty Town director Morgan Elliot on the Manlihood ManCast - a podcast for men

January 19 2023

Morgan Elliott | Potty Town | Manlihood ManCast – a podcast for men

Josh Hatcher fatherhood, interviews, manlihood, movies, personal development for men, podcast, video, Videos, Youtube 0

Welcome to the Manlihood ManCast, the podcast for men, where we focus on personal development and explore the stories of men who are making an impact in the world. Today, we’re honored to have with us Morgan Elliott, a filmmaker and Canton native, who directed the documentary “Potty Town.”

Who is Morgan Elliott?

Meet Morgan Elliott, the talented director behind the hit documentary film “Potty Town.” Not only did this film reach the top 15 on the iTunes/Apple chart for documentaries in the U.S., but it is now available for streaming on Amazon Prime. In addition to his work on “Potty Town,” Morgan has a wealth of experience in the film industry as a writer, editor, and cinematographer. He has also served as the DoP on several award-winning short films.

“Potty Town” tells the story of one man’s humorous and sometimes tumultuous journey as he battles small town government officials to preserve his artistic toilet creations and defend his first amendment rights. This quirky film is a must-see for anyone interested in a unique blend of comedy and social commentary.

Morgan Elliott Background

Morgan Elliott is a talented young filmmaker who has always had a passion for storytelling. He grew up in Canton, New York, and after studying film in college, he decided to pursue a career in the industry. He has worked on a variety of projects in the past, but “Potty Town” marks his first time in the director’s chair. He’s excited to share his vision with audiences everywhere, and we can’t wait to see what he has in store for us.

About Potty Town

“Potty Town: Where Protest Meets Porcelain” is a new documentary that tells the story of Frederick J. “Hank” Robar Sr., and his 25-year-long dispute with the Northern New York town of Potsdam. The film recounts how Robar’s first toilet garden was sown when he reportedly asked the town for a zoning change at one of his properties on Market Street. The request was denied due to traffic concerns, but the town approved a Dunkin’ Donuts franchise to open just three blocks away. This led to the start of a porcelain protest that has now grown across six different properties, with the town making several attempts to uproot the flower-filled potties.

The documentary explores the motivations behind Robar’s decision to create the toilet gardens, and how they’ve evolved over time. Morgan Elliot’s film also delves into the impact of the gardens on the local community and the relationship between the town and Robar. This film is a true story of protest and resilience that will have audiences captivated.

More from Morgan Elliott and Potty Town

Here are some links to find out more information about Morgan Elliott and Potty Town:

Morgan Elliott Linked In | https://www.linkedin.com/in/modelliott/

Morgan Elliott on IMDB | https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9164926/

Potty Town Facebook Page | https://www.facebook.com/PottyTownDocumentary/

Potty Town on IMDB | https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12822978/

We would like to thank Morgan Elliott for joining us today, and we encourage you to watch “Potty Town” on Amazon Prime Video!

Thank you for listening to the Manlihood ManCast, the podcast for men. Be sure to tune in next week for more great content on personal development and the stories of men who are making a difference in the world.

September 29 2021

The Gospel According to Eastwood: Redemption and Masculinity in Clint Eastwood Films

Josh Hatcher featured, movies, Netflix Manly Movie Night 0

I don’t watch a ton of TV these days, but I do watch a little bit before I fall asleep at night. I usually watch a show with my wife, and then about fifteen to thirty minutes of a movie before I fall asleep most nights.

Everyone knows the steely gaze of Clint Eastwood. Some may have written him off for his political views and his bizarre monologue to Obama via an empty chair at the Republican National Convention. (I actually kind of liked it. But that’s neither here nor there.)

Clint Eastwood has directed and starred in movies and television since the 1950s, leaving an indelible mark on our culture.

Lately, I’ve been tuning into some old Clint Eastwood movies that I never really paid attention to before.

I was pleasantly surprised that in the middle of my deep Eastwood dive, the 92 year old actor came out with the flick Cry Macho. I didn’t hesitate to recruit a bunch of my guy friends to go watch it with me.

Cry Macho didn’t disappoint. Perhaps the greatest moment is when Eastwood’s character. Mike Milo says, speaking of a fighting rooster, “If a man wants to name his cock Macho, that’s fine with me!”

That may be the biggest laugh in the movie, but the biggest moment of wisdom was when Mike said, “It’s like anything else in life. You think you got all the answers. Then you realize, as you get old, that you don’t have any of them. By the time you figure it out, it’s too late.”

While I had very little memory of any of the Old School Eastwood movies, we all remember the iconic impact he had — the bulletproof metal plate under the tunic in A Fistful of Dollars that made its way into Back to the Future.

And Eastwood flicks always give us the best memorable one liners…

Go Ahead, Make My Day! – Sudden Impact

Get Off My Lawn! – Gran Torino

Dying ain’t much of a living, boy. – The Outlaw Josey Wales

What threw me down the Eastwood rabbithole, though, was the 2008 film Gran Torino.

Eastwood plays grizzled Korean War veteran Walt Kowalski. When his neighborhood starts to change by an immigration of Asians, he is confronted with his own prejudices and traumas. The film is filled with racial slurs – but it’s NOT a racist movie. It’s a film about a broken and wounded man, who has built up a rugged wall of anger to protect himself. He was trained to kill. He was trained to hate. And when he starts to love, and to care, we start to see the redemption of this man that most people would have just written off as an white old racist man.

I won’t spoil the ending, but it truly is an amazing film, and the climax of the film may induce tears. Crying at an Eastwood flick? Yeah. It just might.

Million Dollar Baby was also a crier. I tried to explain the plot to my wife, when she explained that it sounded like a movie she didn’t want to watch, I could go ahead and spoil the ending. When I did, it confirmed it. “That’s horrible!” she said. The movie wrestles with the old man’s love for his boxing student, who becomes like his own daughter, and when she lay suffering, her final request for him to end her life finds the old man not only wrestling, but full on street brawling with his conscience over his eternal soul.

In Cry Macho, Eastwood’s old man befriends a young boy who he is rescuing from an abusive home life, and teaching him to be a man.

He is washed up, broken, and without hope, and yet he finds a new life and a new love in a dusty mexican town.

All three of these movies have a very real narrative where Eastwood’s characters wrestle with their catholic faith, their belief in God or their questions about God. And they are done in a way that is relatable, and while they may not answer the questions, they reflect what many of us have found, that the human condition is often found searching for the divine, and struggling with the circumstances that prove the divine or make us doubt the divine.

In the spaghetti westerns, A Fistful of Dollars, and For a Few Dollars More, we see the hard, lone wolf cowboy who fights for fortune, and maybe even a bit of honor, even though his path is a little questionable. But even in these flicks, The Man With No Name is not exactly a “lone wolf” – he’s grizzled and independent, but he makes friends, he cares for the weak, he defends the defenseless, and he may attack the bad guys unscrupulously, but there’s an honor about the way he looks out for the friends he finds.

In The Outlaw Josey Wales, which is my second favorite after Gran Torino, Eastwood plays Josey Wales, the last of a troop of confederate soldiers who refuses to sell out to the Union. His family is murdered, and as he is hunted down, he befriends a gaggle of rag-tag unlikely heroes, women, old men, and others he finds himself fighting to defend.

The popular film message that “every hero struggles with the internal battle of good and evil” is not a new thing, but I feel Eastwood does it better than Marvel or Star Wars or whatever other popular franchise attempts to tell a story. Eastwood preaches with dirt and dust and blood and curse words in a way that is organic, and not contrived.

We all wrestle with overcoming our base instincts and rising into our potential heroism. That’s why Eastwood films will resonate well into this century and even beyond. It’s a timeless struggle of human nature, and a timeless virtue that overcomes it that permeate as sharply as Eastwood’s gaze.

June 4 2013

Hail To The King, Baby: The Most Underrated B Movies You’ve Never Seen

Jim McDonald featured, general manliness, movies attack of the killer tomatoes, b movies, evil dead, getting lucky, killer tomatoes eat france 0

By Jim McDonald

If you relieve yourself in a standing position there’s a movie you love that’s hideous. The production values are so low as to be laughable, and the plot is full of more holes than your favorite old t-shirt. Why is this? I think it’s because men are doers. We like to look at something and be able to say, “I could do that!” While many of us have gone on to prove our right to add to the gene pool through the creation of cinematic blockbusters, our unsung heroes are those who create the fast food cheeseburger of the theater world, the B movie.

We all know the equation for a good B movie. A replaceable plot that’s been rehashed more times than a man of average intelligence can count, cheap scenery, a small cast, and more than a little stock footage. More than a few directors have attempted to stake their claim in the realm of low budget cinema by covering up a lack of creativity with boobs, blood and brutality, but a truly spectacular B movie offers something more. A unique take that surpasses the overdone (and often overblown) themes to give the viewer something unexpected. Something that will be cloned by mainstream movies for years to come, and provide a lifetime of inside jokes for those lucky enough to stumble across such a gem. In this spirit I give you the most overlooked B movies of all time.

#5: Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn – The Evil Dead trilogy is legendary. The first and the third installments in the series, Evil Dead and Army Of Darkness, have rabid cult followings, but the true gem is the green kangaroo of this triad, Evil Dead II. What do you think of when someone mentions Evil Dead? Man with a chainsaw hand? That had its origins in Evil Dead II. How about the line “I’ll swallow your soul”? Evil Dead II. The word Necromonicon never appeared in the initial offering of Sam Raimi’s opus. The humor that pervades B movie marvel Army Of Darkness had its twisted, 3 Stooges genesis in Evil Dead II. The lack of nudity found in your run of the mill B movie fare won’t even be missed when you see the interesting shades of blood used in this flick (none of which are red) and the trippy puppetry as bad ass main character Ash slowly goes insane.

#4: Killer Tomatoes Eat France – Everyone knows that Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes is the quintessential B movie. Did you know that the folks that gave us paper mache tomatoes tormenting the United States gave us not one, but three sequels, three video games and an animated TV series? By far the best of all of these is the final film feature in the tomato quadrilogy, Killer Tomatoes Eat France. In the final epic of the violent vegetable franchise we see Professor Gangrene and his rebellious puppet tomatoes attack Europe in a final attempt at world domination which can only be thwarted by Skippy from 80s sitcom Family Ties. I learned a great deal watching this movie, such as in France all men are called Frenchy and all women are named Marie.

#3: Getting Lucky – This bizarre comedy about a nerd who wins the love of his life, the beautiful cheerleader Christy, with the help of a leprechaun trapped in a beer bottle as punishment for his drunken hijinks, is laugh out loud funny. This is a prime example of nudity getting in the way of a good movie. The skin shown is an annoying distraction from the constant humor of a rusty leprechaun botching every wish granted. This movie has it all – a message of the importance of being eco-friendly, a love story, a man attacking himself with his own tennis racket, and a finale featuring a chase on horseback. Standard B movie clichés abound, such as a cheesy soundtrack, poor acting (Christy seems distracted through the entire flick, and try not to laugh at the basketball coach’s heartfelt instructions to his team) and actors playing teenagers that are obviously a decade too old for the role. Getting Lucky is a gem that hasn’t seen the light of day since the death of USA Network’s Up All Night.

#2: Starcrash – Remember how much you loved Star Wars? Remember how you thought “it would be amazing if someone could do this on a shoestring budget, using legitimate actors who will hope everyone forgets they did this in the future”? Welcome to Starcrash. This 1979 space opera falls squarely between Star Wars and Xena Warrior Princess, all but ripping off the first and more than likely inspiring the second. Space smuggler Stella Star (Bond girl Caroline Munro) must save the galaxy. The emperor (Christopher Plummer – Captain Von Trapp from “The Sound of Music”)’s son (David Hasselhof) is at her side for an interstellar adventure that includes light saber battles, among other obvious Star Wars trappings. All the action is set to an original score by John Barry (Midnight Cowboy, Goldfinger, Somewhere in Time, Dances with Wolves). Secret weapons, frozen planets and lasers abound in this little known clunker that every sci-fi fan should view at least once.

#1: Netherbeast Incorporated – Vampire movies have been done and overdone for years, but Netherbeast Incorporated offers something a little different. A telephone company in Arizona is actually a front for Netherfolk, or in common lingo, vampires. They live and work within the organization’s building, allowing the local vampire populace to live in a controlled environment away from the dangers of the mortal world. When an executive begins to experience the vampire version of dementia (“the retardations”) and hires from outside the Netherfolk community the fun begins. There are a lot of recognizable faces in Netherbeast Incorporated, including Steve Burns (Blue’s Clues), Jason Mewes (Clerks, Malrats, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back), Judd Nelson (The Breakfast Club), and Darrell Hammond (Saturday Night Live). I have watched this movie numerous times, and it remains quirky, fun, and just plain funny every time.

There are several honorable mentions worth looking into. The rock n’ roll vampire farce “Suck” is a hilarious movie, and includes Dave Foley, Alice Cooper, Moby, Henry Rollins and Malcolm McDowell in its cast. 1980s sci-fi nuggest “Night of the Creeps” and “Night of the Comet” are both incredibly fun. Ed Wood’s very satisfying “The Bride of the Monster” is overshadowed by big brother “Plan 9 From Outer Space” though far superior in many ways. With today’s technology anyone can make a movie. I’m sure we’ll see more low budget jewels as time goes by.

June 2 2013

Chuck Norris Vs. Bruce Lee

Michael Miller featured, general manliness, martial arts, movies bruce lee, bruce lee versus chuck norris, chuck norris, chuck norris v bruce lee, chuck norris versus bruce lee, martial arts 16

I remember being around ten year’s old watching martial arts movies with my best friend Marc. He was a huge Bruce Lee fan, and I idolized Chuck Norris. We used to argue all the time about who would have won in a “real” fight. I say “would have” because this was in 1990 and Bruce died in 1973. Who would have thought that I’d find that answer out years later from those who knew both of these gentlemen?

Many people base their opinion about these two martial arts icons off of the movie Return of the Dragon where they fought each other at the end of the movie, and Bruce ended up killing Chuck. Because of that movie some people feel Bruce was superior. They forget that it was only a movie. Bruce was abnormally gifted. He was a little guy at 5’7” and 146 pounds who hit like a heavyweight and was arguably the fastest striker this planet has ever seen. He certainly was nobody to mess with, but neither was Chuck. Chuck was the first American to ever receive a black belt in a Korean style (Tae Kwon Do), which was an amazing feat.

Bruce was phenomenal and certainly the most iconic person in martial arts history, and he has done the most for the industry in my opinion. Joe Lewis, the greatest heavyweight kickboxer of all time (and one of my instructors) trained with Bruce many times. Joe was a world champion Karate fighter before he even met Bruce. Bruce asked him to become a student under him. Joe liked what Bruce had to offer so he did. He learned from Bruce for around two years. There have been times where Bruce took credit for Joe Lewis’s success. Joe was already a champion before he started training with Bruce. Joe mentioned in an article one time that the image of Bruce was much different than the reality of Bruce. He never fought in the ring, but many of those who knew him say he would have done well. He was phenomenal, but he never proved himself the way Chuck Norris, Joe Lewis and Bill “Superfoot” Wallace have. “Bruce was not a fighter,” Lewis said in one interview. “He was an actor and a teacher. He was a great teacher.”

According to Chuck Norris, he and Bruce “sparred.” If you are not familiar with that term, it simply means that they fought each other in a friendly fashion outside of a sanctioned tournament or match. Usually you go about 80 percent or so and if you daze your sparring partner you back off and let him regroup. In a real bout you go 100 percent, and if you daze him, you do whatever you can to finish him within the context of the rules.

Bruce never believed in high kicks. Chuck was a black belt in a Korean style (known for high kicking) and he educated Bruce that if he learned to kick high it would make his lower kicks a lot better. Bruce ended up loving high kicks after that. During the sparring session Chuck got the best of Bruce and kept hitting him with a certain kick. Bruce got frustrated and said, “You keep kicking me. How can I stop you from doing that?” Chuck replied with, “You could move.” The old adage, “The best defense is to not be there” comes into play here, which means that if someone is firing a punch or kick at you, just simply moving out of the line of fire is the best response.

My professional opinion comes from three of my instructors who actually knew Bruce Lee and worked out with him (Joe Lewis and two others). My one instructor did very well against Bruce. The other instructor actually sparred Bruce, and then ended up fighting Chuck in a tournament. I remember one day I was with this instructor and a commercial came on that Chuck Norris was in. He looked at the television and said, “He kicked my ass.” Then he proceeded to say that Chuck Norris would have ruined Bruce Lee in a fight. This instructor said that when he sparred Bruce it was a pretty even match. Bruce caught him with a good punch and then he kicked Bruce right in the balls and dropped him. He then said when he fought Chuck, it wasn’t pretty. Chuck kicked his butt. By the way, this instructor of mine is certainly no slouch. He was one of Elvis Presley’s bodyguards.

So, according to a man who fought both of them, Chuck Norris would have beaten the tar out of Bruce Lee. Some others will disagree, but what really matters is that both of these fine men have done more for the martial arts industry than anybody else (primarily because of their movies) and both have learned from each other. With all that being said, let us never forget that Chuck Norris was an only child…eventually.